Miracles

This past week was so awesome and full of miracles and I’ll talk about the few big ones. We had to drop a few investigators but we were able to find 12 new ones this week and most of them seem ready to progress.

Miracle #1: One day we were talking to some people who were working on our pensionista’s house and one of them was interested because his sister is a member but lives in Trujillo. This happened almost a month ago so we’ve been looking for him ever since. Tuesday we were walking down a street to contact another area but I saw someone watching the Studio C Scott Sterling soccer video so I stopped Elder Shumway to watch it for like 15 seconds. I decided we should contact that house so I just knocked and the person who came to the door was the guy we’ve been looking for this whole time. He was super interested and we taught a good 1^st lesson and now he has a baptismal date. He’s also read some of the Book of Mormon before and really wants to learn more.

Miracle #2: We got 4 people to go to church this week but we were especially excited about this one guy and some of his family attending. It’s super hard to get people to church from our area because we have to travel 20-25 minutes in a little bus to get there. Anyways, we’ve been teaching this guy and his family for almost 2 months and he wasn’t progressing very well but he just wanted to listen to us. We finally got him to go this week and he loved it and he even participated a little bit. We have a baptismal date with him in February but last night as we talked to him he just straight up told us that he wants to be baptized and his family also.

We also got to visit the American this past week and his girlfriend. They were super cool and they want to go to church really bad and learn more. We’ll have the opportunity to visit them a few times this week and it’s awesome because they always prepare food for us.

It was a pretty crazy week and we’re hoping for some more success this week.

Love you guys!

Elder Smith 

I found a nice dog

Splits with the zone leaders and one of them is from the DR

P-day today

Pics of my room

January 22, 2018

This past week was pretty weird but pretty fun. We had to travel to Tumbes 6 times in the last 8 days which kind of stunk because it’s an hour and a half round trip. We got to go up there for our last p-day and went to the border of Ecuador because they have a ton of shops and sell stuff for super cheap. I ended up getting a LeBron jersey for $13.

We also got to go up Wednesday for interviews with President and Thursday we had a multizona. It was actually a lot of fun and I learned a ton. I don’t have any pics from it but I’m sure there are plenty on the facebook page.

One of the things we learned from the multizona is that we should do comp. study outside somewhere because there are no opportunities to meet people in our room. The first time we did comp. study outside (on the beach), we met 2 super cool people and 1 of them was actually from California. He knows a good amount of Spanish and he's here for work for 6 weeks. He was with his girlfriend whose from our area and she’s almost bilingual as well. We were able to talk English with them and they invited us to go and teach them and have dinner which we’re doing Wednesday night. It will be super weird teaching in English and having to translate some parts but we’re super excited. It was also funny because after this experience we had to travel to pick up our clothes from our lavanderia lady and on the bus there was a lady from Holland that knew English so we got to talk about the Gospel for 20 minutes with her in English.

We really didn’t have that much time to proselyte this past week but we were blessed to be able to find some awesome people and the future looks bright for Zorritos.

Love you guys!

Elder Smith

Temples and Family History

So this past week flew by again but not much happened. It cooled down here a little bit this week so it wasn't so hot which was nice. Also, apparently an earthquake hit Peru yesterday but I'm not sure where but we're all okay up here.

This week we were able to plan and teach some awesome lessons about Temples and Family History. As much as I've always hated doing family history it was cool to see how much our investigators were interested in it. These lessons also helped some of our investigators who have been thinking about baptism for a while and are practically ready for it they just need to make the decision. 

We also had a super cool experience this week in a lesson with a less active and her husband who isn't a member but has met with missionaries before. As we were teaching about reading the scriptures, praying, and attending church the wife stopped us in the lesson and just bore her testimony which was super strong. The Spirit was strong in the room and it impacted her husband a lot and he's looking like he'll progress very well. 

Love you guys and I hope everything is going well there. 

Elder Smith

1st Transfer

I have officially finished my first transfer! This week flew by so fast and we had a decent amount of success. Last week we had a zone p-day on the beach at night so that’s why we had to email earlier but it was a lot of fun.

A few of our investigators are still progressing and we found some cool new ones this week. We thought things were going great with Juan and he’s already in Alma in the Book of Mormon. He fasted and everything with us but he’s been looking up anti-Mormon stuff on the internet so he’s starting to doubt his faith and has had a lot of questions. It’s kind of frustrating but he says he still wants to be baptized eventually.

Other good news that I have is we thought we only had 1 member in all of Zorritos but we found out there’s other inactives here. We found 1 of them because he stopped us on the street and asked for a Book of Mormon and we were able to visit him. It turns out his family aren’t members and he was able to help us find 2 other people that are less active whose family members aren’t baptized either. We started talking to them and we’re hoping to help them reactivate and baptize the rest of their families. They all seemed super cool and have a desire to go to church so we’ll see how things play out.

Not much happened this week other than the usual but I did find out that I’ve lost 16 pounds since being here. My fingers are crossed that I don’t get sick and end up losing more.

Love you guys!

Elder Smith

January 2, 2018

They decided to switch our p-day to Tuesday this week so we could proselyte on New Years but we didn't find that out till Saturday so I´m sorry for not letting you guys know.

This week had its ups and downs. It was fun to go to Piura and catch with my group and eat some good food. Like always, we had some trouble traveling so we were stuck in Piura from Wednesday and got back Friday afternoon.

I also have some bad news about our investigator who was supposed to be baptized yesterday. He wasn't picking up his phone when we were in Piura and didn't answer till Friday afternoon when the baptismal interview was supposed to be. He finally answered but told us he wasn't going to be able to get baptized because he wanted to deal with some problems first. We were really sad when he told us but we have been able to teach him twice since then and he still came to church and everything. He still has a desire to be baptized and he´s even going to fast with us next Sunday. We´re not entirely sure what the problem is yet but we’re still hoping to baptize him soon. The good news is that his “wife” was still able to get baptized though.

Other than that we didn't have too much happen just because everyone was drunk out of their minds. New Year´s Eve was kind of crazy though cause everyone here loves fireworks and they were just blaring music all night so I didn't sleep that well. They also have a weird tradition here where everyone dresses mannequins up and they just burn them at midnight and it´s really creepy. My comp got some good pics of it so I´ll try to send them soon.

I´m very sad to hear the news about Charlie but it´s good she’ll be with Bubbles and Peach. I hope Sammie is doing alright.

Take care and I love y´all.

Elder Smith